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Sunday, April 7, 2013

Chocolate Marble Coffee Cake: National Coffee Cake Day

Today is National Coffee Cake Day, and there are so many
wonderful recipes for Chocolate Coffee Cake, Chocolate Marble Coffee
Cake, and hey, lots of pound cakes are coffee cakes. Coffee cakes are
sweet cakes usually meant to accompany coffee. They are usually single
layer cakes, baked in loaf or bundt pans, but other shapes are fine. I have a square chiffon cake pan that works with the
following recipe.

This recipe for Chocolate Marble Coffee Cake produces a cake with a great dense
texture, and it will appeal to both chocolate and vanilla cake
lovers--and it has coffee in it, so it's a perfect "Coffee Cake." This
recipe is adapted fromStephanie Jaworski's on Joy of Baking. If you're not familiar with her website, you should get acquainted. Lots of great recipes.

Marble Cake:
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F and place rack in center of oven. Butter 10 inch bundt or tube pan.
2. In stainless steel bowl, over saucepan of simmering water, melt chocolate with coffee. Remove from heat and set aside.
3. In separate bowl sift together flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and ground cinnamon. Set aside.
4. In bowl of electric mixer (or with hand mixer), beat butter
until smooth and creamy. Gradually add sugar and continue to beat
until mixture is light and fluffy (about 5 minutes). Add beaten
eggs, one at a time, mixing well after each addition. Beat in
vanilla extract and sour cream.
5. With mixer on low speed, alternately add flour mixture and milk to the batter, in three additions, beginning and ending with
flour.
6. After preparing batter, pour half of batter into separate
bowl. Stir melted chocolate into one half of batter, mixing
well. Place batter into prepared pan by alternating spoons of
vanilla batter and chocolate batter. Then, with flat knife
almost to bottom of pan, gently draw swirls (up, over and down)
through batter as you rotate pan (if you're using round
bundt) to marbleize it. Don't over mix. Smooth top of batter.
7. Bake for about 50 - 60 minutes, or until toothpick inserted in
center comes out clean. Remove from oven and place on wire rack to
cool for about 10 minutes before removing cake from pan to cool
completely. Serve warm or at room temperature.

I think this cake is fine the way it is (not too sweet), but you can
dust with powdered sugar, drip with a chocolate glaze or frost with a
chocolate ganache.

This cake will keep for a couple of days at room temperature or it can be frozen.